need help with curved drawer construction

[Mike in Mystic]

Hi everyone,

SWMBO has asked me to build a side table for the nursery. It has an oval top, sleigh shaped legs and a lower shelf. None of those are too big a deal. The problem is the drawer portion. You can see a picture of the item here:

have never made anything like that and really am unsure of how to do it. If anyone knows of some good articles or techniques they can share, it would be very helpful.

Thanks!

Mike

[Lazarus Long]

This looks like a job for bent laminations. Wood Works, David Marks program on the DIY channel sometimes has episodes devoted to bent laminated projects. That a good place to see how the process works. Also, the Taunton Press

has a good series of books for doing various things with wood. That'd be the "Complete Illustrated" series.

Another way to get the wood to bend like that is to use plywood and cut kerfs vertically to get the wood to bend. This technique is shown in those books I pointed out and in past issues of Woodsmith magazine. Woodsmith is a bit unique in that all their back issues remain available. They are at

The plan your looking for is a semi-elliptical hall table from years ago. I think it's within the first 90 issues of the magazine. They might have compiled all that into a book by now.

And lastly, for the elliptical top and shelf, a jig can be made to guide your router in a true ellipse. There are factory made jigs, and there are homemade jigs. Use google and do a search on ellipse jig.

You could also ask your questi>Hi everyone,

[George M. Kazaka]

[Dan Parrell]

This can be done several ways,all you need is a piece of ply wood with two blocks fastened to determine the height and width of the arc.Take thin sheets of plywood or veneer 1/8 or less and glue them individually.When you have the right thickness for the drawer front ,lay on top of the two blocks and clamp down in the center while glue is still wet and continue clamping until you've reached the desired arc and let dry.Or Steam method is another way or cold clamping and stress relieve. OR You can also use 1/2 plywood and cut relief marks on one side every 1/2 to

3/4'' apart and about 3/4's of the way thru the sheeting, take 1/8 veneer and glue to both sides and clamp down while glue is wet and use the blocks and clamp to achieve desired arc.finish up by sawing off excess on both ends and install finish trim on edges good luck dp

[Bruce]

[George]

This lazy guy uses some 8 or 10/4 basswood, half-blind dovetails, then saws the parallel faces.

[Ian Wheeler]

Mike,

Made my curved front bedside tables last year. Made up a simple form (two parts) from MDF, then laminated 3 pieces 1/4 ply together. My design used a 3/4" drawer front and a 3/4" decorative front - I bent all the pieces together to ensure matching curves.

Works well, not to difficult. Your drawer looks quite small - won't take much force to bend the plywood. The hardest part is getting 8 sides coated with glue, all the laminations stacked in the form, lined up carefully and the clamps tightened evenly before the glue starts tacking up (I used plain yellow glue - slower setting glue would have been better - but it's a messy job, I wouldn't use Gorilla glue).

Ian.

[FOW]

[Mike in Mystic]

Thanks for all the suggestions, you've given me a lot of ideas.

Mike

[Larry Bud]

front, curved drawer. I used laminations for the build up. First I drew the arc up on the computer, printed it out, and traced it to 3/4" ply and cut it out with the jigsaw. I made two pieces. You may notice from the photos on my site that the front of the table is actually in 4 separate pieces. The grain all runs in the same direction.

A 1.5" strip above and below the drawer, and the two pieces to the sides of the drawer. They were all made out of approx 3/16" (or whatever I could get my planer down to) of Mahogany. I used 5 laminations. Liberally applied some yellow glue (although after making this, I've read that yellow glue can move over time.... We'll see. I don't think the curve on my pieces is that drastic to cause such a thing), and clamped it up using the concave portion to hold against the convex portion. Before doing this I marked on the fixture where the ends and the center of each piece occured. This way, when I glued up for the drawer front, I used the same portion of the fixture for clamping.

After sizing to width the 4 pieces of the frame, I glued them together. No biscuits, just glue. Then I trimmed to length, and hand planed it down smooth. There WILL be some manual work in this. In fact, that was the most difficult part.

I did the drawer front after the table was put together. I suppose I could have made the entire front in 1 piece, and cut the drawer front out. It'd be interesting to see the difference in time and quality of I did that. The drawer front also required a fair amount of planing to get it to the exact contour of the frame.

This was the first (and only, so far) time in doing any type of curve, and I think it turned out quite nice.